In the end, this column is not recognised as a date and there is no option to set it as a “Due Date” and therefore we cannot automatically drive tasks from this field.

Another method I thought that might be effective, or a work around would be to set a date using an automation like the following existing one;
“WHEN AN ITEM IS CREATED, SET DUE DATE TO CREATION DATE PLUS SOME DAYS”
However this automation is limited to working off a creation date + some days and isn’t suitable when you’re trying to create timelines off a start date that cannot change.

ideally, the automation would be something more like…

“WHEN AN ITEM IS CREATED, SET DUE DATE TO WHENDUE DATE”

This would look something like…

WHEN AN ITEM IS CREATED, SET ORDER DATE TO 7 DAYS BEFORE START DATE

Any feature updates or ideas on how we could get this to work for us would be much appreciated!